@autism101@actuallyautistic
Everyday life of a #gifted and #autistic
🙄
My gifted brain: Hey, look, something new, exciting, challenging!! Yay!!!🥳🥳🥳
My autistic brain: Now, wait a sec.... hey, what you're doing??? You know, we can't deal with that?!?!
My gifted brain: Oh, shut up, this is sooo cool!!!💃🎵🎶🎵
My autistic brain: *sigh
Me: thanks guys... *overwhelmed *shutdown
😒😔🤯
"Gifted children and adults are often surprised to realize that they are different... particularly as they enter adolescence, [they] may feel very alone in an absurd, arbitrary, and meaningless world, which they feel powerless to change. They may feel that adults in charge are not worthy of the authority they hold.
As one child described it, they feel 'like abandoned aliens waiting for the mother ship to come and take them home'."
„No! You‘re wrong! What a shit take! You have no idea what you‘re talking about! Stop the drugs, man!“ and the like.
After some discussion, people say:
„I have not thought of it this way. I got you wrong. We should actually consider doing it your way. You seem to have deeper insight than the average person.“
This often makes me question my place in this world. Anyone else? #actuallyautistic
I have had many fights, fights and confrontations in my life. Sometimes for work and other times for personal reasons. But without a doubt the most exhausting and destructive war and struggle has been against depression and illness. It usually happens that people who have just met me perceive me as somewhat tough or aggressive or tough, I don't know. And I surely am. But if it weren't for that, I wouldn't have survived so many illnesses and the major depression that took me almost ten years to get out of, only to discover that I wasn't crazy but that I was autistic, bipolar, intelligent. Then all the internal struggles fell away, all those wars and chimeras, the war with myself.
The physical consequences, in the form of clinical illnesses, of a life as hectic as a roller coaster and the consequent mental collapse were the end of one life and the beginning of another. Sometimes I have wondered why I still talk about those things and recently I realized that I do it like someone who looks at their scars and shows them as trophies or decorations, as a memory of having survived a war, adversity or many things. . It's like saying "I'm here despite everything and thanks to what a bastard I am."
Most of the time I regret talking about my battles because I feel like an idiot, like the grandfather who always repeats his story. And I think that is indeed the case. I'm close to giving up digital social life because I don't find much value in it anymore, except for a very few people from whom I learn interesting things.
Sometimes, many times, I have felt like a kind of Gulliver in Lilliput. I know that talking about high intellectual abilities makes one be considered arrogant, but in reality it is not. There is a tendency to believe that people who have one deficiency, or several, are disabled or limited and need help.
But if you have a high IQ, if wherever you go you have been given dozens of tests and they all confirm that you are a brain monster, then it is assumed that you have no problem, that your intelligence is more than enough to live in this world. And it surely is so. But when one has other concomitant conditions, everything changes. That is double exceptionality, a genius who does not seem like it because he is autistic. And an autistic who doesn't look like it because he is very intelligent.
And do you know what it feels like on this side? Frustration and desire for isolation. It becomes difficult to relate to someone. And I don't need people to be especially intelligent, in fact many of my friends and loved ones have been almost illiterate.
For such a person, solitude and anonymity are more comfortable than a life of relationship.
Two days ago I woke up from a nap with a seizure, or rather, I was woken up by my wife who was with me at the time. I didn't understand what was happening, she was disoriented and with her consciousness clouded, her neck, throat and tongue cramped, she could not speak or even think. I stayed like this for several minutes after the crisis until I began to realize that she was home and that the person shaking me was my wife. I have had strange events all my life but like never before. A Dr said it was a seizure, so today I finally have an appointment with a neurologist. Since then my brain and my body don't work the same. A feeling of numbness in almost the entire body, lassitude and extreme fatigue that refused to be relieved. Cognitively I don't feel deterioration, except for difficulty concentrating as I normally do and a certain depressed mood.
Years of neglect and ignoring what was happening to me contributed to me getting to this situation. Added to the stress of dangerous jobs and a tendency to hyper physical and mental activity. Finally, the fact of being autistic and the tremendous wear and tear of having lived contrary to myself and making an enormous effort to adapt and survive, even in the things that were good and happy in my life. Young autistic people could take advantage of the hard experience of older people diagnosed late, like me, to understand why the diagnosis is important and find the appropriate way to live, according to their own possibilities and abilities.
Take care. I don't have much thread left on the spool...
I'm not good with social stuff but I'm friendly. I host four #fediverse services on my new #vps: Lemmy, Mastodon, Matrix and Peertube. You can check them out on the respective addresses.
Besides that I own 4 lizards, 2 guineapigs and engage in anti-fascist, anti-corporate and neurodiversity activism.
Ask me for random tech facts and dusty dry humour.
It is still #hispanicheritagemonth for a few day, and it is also #spookyseason ! Let’s combine the two and check these adorable boardbooks that were #gifted by #candlewickpress ! They are colorful. They are fun. Young readers will love them for sure ! All these little monsters just make me smile !
YES! I'm back! In 1hr! Starting with all the #ESO stuffs (Nymics? Bosses?) + Necrom Chapter code giveaway! (Possibly to #Starfield after!) Come say hullo!!
it me: “#Gifted students are not necessarily the best students… Sometimes #GiftedStudents fail because they don’t know how to ask for help, having always been told they were ‘smart,’ so they never learned how to work hard.”
🖌️ "Under Cover: J.C. Leyendecker and American Masculinity" is on for another week (> 8/13) at the #NewYork#Historical Society.
The illustrator of #Arrow, #IvorySoap and other ads sold an idealized vision of the upper-class, athletic young man to the middle-class in the early 20th century. He was also #gay.
He helped define "masculinity" through his illustrations.
A intriguing profile of J.C. Leyendecker by #BlakeGopnik at NYTimes.
Orange juice may become pricier and less sweet over the next several months as Florida’s famous groves yield the smallest crop of citruses in nearly a century.
Hermie Mora (we're friends, he doesn't mind me calling him that) looks so faaaabulos in photos! Look at his tentacles gleam! I must ask him what his routine is; the Ink of a Abbysal applied nightly perhaps?
Thank you to #Bethesda_ANZ for this amazing limited state to celebrate the launch of #Necrom! Jump in and say hullo to Hermie in person!
Very thoughtful engaging read about a family with parents who grew up in a Christian fundamentalist #homeschooling household that left that path.
Of course, as always I must remind readers that many leftists like my family choose to homeschool for very different reasons (i.e. avoiding patriotic/corporate propaganda, more ability to craft education for different needs of neurodivergent students, and of course avoiding bullying).
Life gave me some lemons. What should I do?
Culinary and/or philosophical advice welcome
Florida’s smallest citrus crop in a century to put squeeze on shoppers (wapo.st)
Orange juice may become pricier and less sweet over the next several months as Florida’s famous groves yield the smallest crop of citruses in nearly a century.